Stealth Mini-update:
It’s 05:30 now and I just woke up. Forgot to update last night as I actually I ended up on the phone with various people back in the UK for some hours and then went to sleep. My mind was elsewhere. Full length update this evening I think. Weekdays are weirdly easier to do updates on than the weekend just because I have a routine.
Yet another mini one:
Naturally as soon as I thought I had some clear days and announced I’d be starting daily updates again anything and everything in my life not related to Japanese decided to get busy. Assuming nothing else comes up then tomorrow will be a longer update. Basically this past weekend I was quite socially busy and then chores and talking with people back in the UK ate up a lot more time than I expected (seems to happen monthly so I should expect it by now). Today I had some unexpected overtime and work was very busy - you know one of those days where you get to work and then you seem to blink and the whole day has gone. I managed to squeeze in an hour of SRS though. My normal system is 30 minutes a day but I’ve realised I’m terrible at doing that on weekends as I’m out of routine. One fix is to improve my weekend routine and the other is to just take the weekends off. I find it tricky to get any sort of focused input in at work outside of days when the students aren’t in so I thought I’d try out doing 45-60 minutes of SRS on workdays and taking the weekends off so I can be guilt free.
As for input today, various real life bits and pieces but only about an hour of dedicated listening and half an hour or so of reading so far this evening. I’m gonna try get on with some reading in a minute but reckon I’ll get sleepy and pack it in quite quickly anyway. Tomorrow looks to be a little busy at work but all clear after so we’ll see… I’m optimistic (or perhaps just foolish).
66/100 days
Life, Immersion, etc
As mentioned yesterday I was a bit busier than I thought I’d be, just a mixture of things coming together. Second day of doing an hour of SRS on workdays and it is going well. I am optimistic about cracking on with everything, so long as I am a bit protective of my time from now on, although the coming weekend is completely rammed so is effectively going to have to be written off for Japanese.
I read last week’s Star Wars chapter and have been reading the second volume of Bookworm. Hopefully I’ll polish that off tomorrow and then finish up some diddy book before the weekend.
FInishing the remaining N2 vocab should be no problem so I think I am going to finish that up with the hour of SRS on workdays thing and then once it is finished I will use the spare time to focus on the DOJG. If I really get a move on then I can feasibly blast through Shin-Kanzen Master N2 (Grammar) as well although we’ll see about that.
Had a long and interesting chat with one of the English teachers at work about the kind of friction between the fact that language learning to a high level is a lifelong pursuit but also that sometimes you want to focus on getting a lot better a lot fast in a relatively short period of time (1-3 years). Now I’ve been learning for a couple of years I am a lot more patient than before but also I am much more aware of how much better I could be if I spent more time on studying.
There was some really heavy rain today so I had to walk to work instead of riding my bike and it was a bit hot and miserable. Gonna go have a litte read after posting this and get into a good mindset for tomorrow.
Thanks for reading!
Currently reading:
Completed (since the start of this challenge):
Lifetime completed (possibly incomplete list due to bad memory, in no particular order, excludes stalled and DNF’d books which are easily over 10 in number, excludes manga/articles/anything else):
Mini one:
Did my hour of SRS at work. Had a pretty good day although the neighbour is watching TV at a very loud volume so I ended up doing listening after work up until around now. They only do this about one evening every two or three weeks so not enough to be a big nuisance but it does mean I can’t read a book in my living room so a bit annoying. Gonna try read now though - hopefully it should be smooth.
68/100 days
Life, Immersion, etc
Had a good day at work and who knew but it turns out doing an hour of SRS a day makes ripping through new cards pretty easy. I am interested to see how many reviews build up over the weekend though. Reading has been slower than I would have wanted however that is just a result of me not putting the time in. The coming weekend, including tomorrow after work, is going to be busy so although I will try to read I have no idea how much will get done (getting my excuses in there now for that). After this weekend I have left my social calendar a bit more open on purpose and am pretty optimistic about either finishing everything off with a week or so to spare or if it looks like that is going to happen then I may break out some longer books to try and fill the time a bit more evenly. Or maybe start the shinkanzenmaster book. Regardless, lots of the books I have been reading are fairly short, partly due to the nature of easy books being shorter, and I’d like to balance things with some longer books if I have the time.
I am already thinking too far ahead about what my next challenge will be. This one has taught me some things but one thing that has felt missing is a specific focus as it is quite general. I don’t have the personalty nor want to go hard on just one thing but I think having a specific theme besides my general studies might be interesting. E.g., “world history” and I consume what I want as usual but also every other book is a history book and I would try to watch more history related stuff etc. If you have any good ideas for a 50-250 day study challenge or something then let me know anyway.
That’s it for today - expect some low effort updates this coming weekend!
Currently reading:
Completed (since the start of this challenge):
Lifetime completed (possibly incomplete list due to bad memory, in no particular order, excludes stalled and DNF’d books which are easily over 10 in number, excludes manga/articles/anything else):
Low effort update 1/3:
Went to work. Came home. Going out soon.
Low effort update 2+3/3:
Had a good weekend! Very little Japanese though. Next week is the 文化祭 so looking forward to that.
Good Luck with finishing N2 Vocab, there is still lots of time!
Regarding Shin-Kanzen Master N2 Grammar, if you just do mostly the questions (lightly looking back at the grammar), you can blast through it quite quickly.
At least in my case, I went through the first section (20 or so pages), really quickly - 2 hours or so. I try to make it more like a mock exam. After checking my answers, normally then I look back at the explanations. Though it depends.
Just realized that you read 世界から猫が消えたなら, glad that you found some enjoyment…
I like that fact that it was quite “floaty” not really something to think too much about, second chances, not taking things for granted, how things can be quite inter-connected and time is quite precious… My parents constantly remind me that time is not infinite ( 
)
Probably the book made quite an impression on me as I bought it initially in 2015!!! Bought it again in 2018 as I lost my copy while moving and finally was able to read it in Japanese in 2020. I normally go for light novels, so currently its the only novel that I have read in Japanese haha.
You are right that it was quite dragged on though. I probably value quite high how relaxing / easy it was to read yet its a “novel” (which may not be a good thing haha).
Mini-ish one:
Quite tired after the weekend and today has flown by. Finished up the second volume of Bookworm and I think I will probably just finish reading the last 50-60k characters of Star Wars next as I find it hard to read just one chapter a week as the flow breaks too much for me, especially as I know what is gonna happen. That is actually why I have been stalled for so long on Kafka, as I read it some years ago in English and have low motivation to read the ending again.
The vocab is relatively trivial so I am not too worried about it. For reference Anki has a stat called “knowledge acquisition rate” which is how many cards are memorised per hour. For my kanji deck the number is 24.5, for my vocab mining deck the number is 68.5, for the N2 deck the number is 166.8. I have a backlog still from the weekend but it should be cleared tomorrow and I would imagine the remaining 500ish cards will be added by the end of this week or the middle of next week at the latest. There are some words I don’t know in the deck but the majority are easy or words I have seen a bunch of times already so quite low friction.
I would guess each page would take me 5-10 minutes (including time checking answers and correcting things) so I am ballpark expecting it to take 15-35 hours to finish. I could be totally wrong here though. It heavily depends how hard I find the questions. I am not sure if I will finish it within the time limit of this challenge but I’ll probably want to get through it before the JLPT test date.
I think more cosy novels definitely have value but during this 100 day thing I have been reading a lot of cosy or easier things and it perhaps is taking a toll （笑）I think if I had been only reading very difficult things and then read that book my rating would likely have been slightly higher.
Whatever happens, good luck. I am quite confident you will probably finish the main part of N2 grammar book on time.
Probably its natural that you have gone for a lot of easy books… I would have done the same as its easier to finish within a limited time.
Mini one again:
I think I forgot to update yesterday. Today was a little busier than I expected. The morning was expected 文化祭 stuff but the afternoon ended up being lots of unexpected although simple work. I only manged do do about 20 minutes of anki because of that(!) so I’m hoping to slowly make up for the lost time the rest of this week. I ended up reading less than I’d have liked (15-20k characters so far today). Tomorrow will be a little busy (second day of 文化祭 and I have some marking to do) but if I guard my time I should be able to comfortably do my SRS and I have after work clear for reading. I want to do lots of socialising with other teachers tomorrow so that’s gonna take precedent over SRS if it comes to that - that’s basically what happened today.
Mini one but because I’m using my phone to upload a picture:
“Work” was fun. Did my SRS. Gonna start reading in a minute.
I bought a bunch of old books at the 文化祭, 50円 each. Unfortunately mostly they’re too tricky to read without a dictionary but I’ll probably have a crack at some of them after this back to basics thing is over. The one exception is 1リットルの涙 as I can probably get away with extensively reading that without leaning on a dictionary (which is why I bought it). I am aware that normally people post pictures of all the manga they’ve bought so maybe I should post my manga some other time but hopefully someone who sees this also finds my new old books interesting…
Indeed I do. I do love old used books and all these look sooo nice, they look even nicer displayed on top of a tatami. There is even a study of logic by Hegel! (The one about the intellectual history of Japan in wartime looks quite interesting though not within my grasp.)
That’s just my floor!
Today: 病休 (´；ω；`)ｳｩｩ I won’t do SRS, gonna try reading but it will be slow going.
It’s a nice floor, I like it! It’s a good match with the old books.
お大事に！
Also sick today unfortunately. I’ve just been watching English language movies I’ve missed in the last year or so and occasionally trying to read in English to gauge my concentration levels. Even walking to the konbini was pretty headache inducing. Had to cancel a dinner and drinks as well. I was really counting on this weekend to do some reading so really hoping I wake up feeling great tomorrow so I can enjoy some books.
That sucks. Hope you feel better soon!
As Pablo said, お大事に！
Mini: Haven’t done I longer update for a while I just realised so I’ll try do that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Yesterday and today I’ve been focusing hard on my job and reading to try make up for lost time when I was sick. I got into a couple of English books when I was sick so I’m also finishing off one of those in my spare moments but I’ve paused the second (much longer) one. SRS has been lousy as I’m playing catchup but it’ll sort itself out in a few days.
Hopefully your are getting better and better and things are sorting themselves out!
Day 85/100 (I think)
There are a number of things I want to write longer posts about but I am going to limit this one to just some reviews of what I have been reading! I am no longer sick - was a bit worried that I would fall too far behind on this study challenge thing but it should be totally fine, especially as I have picked a couple of shorter books for my final stretch. I’ll get into other thoughts and topics in another update but for today here are some reviews (obviously spoilers may be contained, if you care, although nothing major):
I read volumes one and two of the kids edition which has full furigana. They correspond to volume one of the regular light novel edition but has some extra short stories and manga.
I am not a massive fantasy guy but I get on reasonably well with slice of life type stuff if I am in the mood. A SoL book will never be my favourite and I will likely forget about it within a few months but they are generally easy to read and good to read in 10-20 minute snatches to relax. It was exactly in that way that I enjoyed this book (or these books). I found things quite slow and draggy but that is something inherent to the genre. I honestly did not care at all about the setting and the characters were extremely two dimensional. However, this book knows what it wants to be and does it well. If you are a fan of this genre then you will likely love it. The setting and 2D characters are perfect examples of this genre’s tropes and the quality of the writing was good for what it is. I doubt I will continue reading the series but I can see why someone would like this. Not life changing, not thought provoking, still managed to read it without getting especially bored.
4/10 - high-quality pulp
This is an anti-war book which tells the true story of a young girl who died from cancer that was caused by the bombing of Hiroshima, as told by her brother. The book is aimed at children so the language doesn’t get too diffuclt and any technical terms are explained with footnotes. The writer’s voice is a little old-fashioned and a little unusually 丁寧語 is used throughout. I guess the intended feeling is like a kindly old man narrating a story to the audience (an older elementary school child) and I think it manages to achieve that quite successfully. A final note on language difficulty for those who may read this book, the dialogue uses a lot of slightly old-fashioned Hiroshima dialect. For me this was not a big deal as I live in Kansai and most of the dialect I was already quite familiar with and the things I hadn’t see before I could easily infer. If you are not used to non-standard dialects or western Japanese dialects then I would suggest reading a short guide or something before trying this book.
On the side of the story. I actually had to stop reading this book at work as I found it too emotional. I finished the remaineder off in a day or two but I had to take breaks to emotional prepare myself. Sadako’s story is told as part of the exhibition at the peace museum in Hiroshima and when I visited it deeply affected me. Going into this book I already was aware of the story and whilst reading I was constantly reminded of the peace museum. I think a combination of knowing what will happen, being keenly aware that the story is real, the personal authorial voice of Sadako’s brother, and the fact that the tone is like someone trying to kindly explain the reality of war to children but without lying, together these things made it a very moving read for me.
7/10 - a very affecting anti-war book for children
This is the debut novel by 遠野遥 which won the Bungei Prize. His second novel would go on to win the Akutagawa Prize.
This is a very short book but it is gripping and quite intense. I am still not quite sure how I feel about it and would like to read some criticism of it at some point soon. The language is very everyday and quite straightforward however the pace is quite quick and there are many quite shocking scenes of sexual assault and violence, almost immediately, which could be quite confusing for less confident readers (not to mention just emotionally difficult to read in general).
I don’t want to spoil the story here as it is so short it could be spoilt in a sentence or two but to say something without saying anything, the main character is a young man who wants to become “beautiful” and to do so he likes (or, perhaps, does not like) dressing as a woman. He is also extremely critical of how “beautiful” other people are. The story explores the relationship between beauty, sexuality, and gender. It is a fascinating vignette of a confused young man and the main character feels like something of a 2019 answer to Murakami’s 1960s based protagonist from Norwegian Wood, although less developed. In fact, that would be perhaps where my doubts about this story lie. It is fast, sharp, violent, and quite shocking but the cost of that is things are left undeveloped and unexplored. I would guess this is deliberate, aiming to get the reader to consider the themes on their own, but it also feels like Tono is still not confident in his abilities as a writer to really push into his themes more fully. Best to consider this a long short story and not a novel. If you’re a confident reader then I’d suggest reading this in one or two bursts or at least over a single day as there is a frantic and panicked coherence to the thing which could be lost if the reading were to be spread out.
I feel I should repeat my above content warnings here before recommending this book. There is very intense description of sexual violence, including scenes involving children.
7/10 - a provoking and well written character study which left me with questions
The eponymous book is a collection of four short stories. This is a review of the first story which is also by far the longest (about 40k characters). I will write about the other stories once I have read them.
I have read コンビニ人間 (by the same author and winner of the Akutagawa Prize) two or three times over since I started learning Japanese but not out of some love for the book but simply because it was one of the first things I read and it is short enough to revisit and read in moments over a week. It is a reasonable short novel which explores themes of gender and our general roles in capitalist society, especially post-bubble Japan - well written but ultimately if it didn’t have such a significant place in my Japanese learning journey I likely would have forgotten the details of it by now.
殺人出産 felt totally different and yet also very similar. The similarity comes from the writing style. I don’t want to judge an author from just two pieces of writing but the voice of the main characters in both works feel hollow, like they are shell people. This is arguably the point in both cases but it still made things feel a bit samey. The feeling of difference however is quite strong when it comes to the story. The premise of 殺人出産 is that in some alternative reality people can elect to give birth to ten people and therefore gain the right to murder one person, anyone of their choosing. The story doesn’t deal much in the implications of this beyond the basic human level. This is not hard sci-fi; it is more of a narrative thought expirement. Some simple details like men being able to have artificial wombs are mentioned but lore building is not the point here, if you can bring yourself to not ask too many questions. Rather, the story is focused more on the main character’s psychological dealings with this system, a system which is relatively new (within a 100 years). The story touches on some themes which are applicable for us here in this world as well, such as the massive shift in moral consensus that can occur within just 100 years and how younger generations will take the previous generation’s ideas and magnify them and distort them (so be careful what you preach). Overall it was a little on the nose, which I also felt for コンビニ人間, but well written and quite compelling. I won’t get into the psychological aspects of the main character too much as it leads to some very large spoilers but the final part of the story had my jaw literally drop and I was absolutely disgusted. Content warning as such: graphic descriptions of extreme violence.
6/10 - a well written predictable yet unpredictable little story
Okay, I’m gonna leave it there for today. Hope you enjoyed reading!
